FINAL FLIGHT DELAYED

by Beverly Koepplin

For eight days she laid in the hospital bed.

Eight days of her life went missing in that stillness.

If she moved, she does not remember.

If she shed tears or laughed, she does not remember.

Her watchers said sometimes her eyelids flickered,

And one of her thin hands 

moved restlessly across her body.

Otherwise, like a cocoon, she laid there 

waiting for life to come,

Not even knowing she was waiting, just being.

On the ninth day, she woke up, facing the window

where a tree bloomed against a beautiful blue sky

and the light was so bright it hurt her reborn eyes,

but her room was strangely dim 

and the air smelled stale.

She turned her head to find she was not alone.

A flock of angels crowded around the foot of her bed.

She thought “this is the end, my time has come”,

and she gazed at their hands 

outstretched to beckon her  on.

Half rising, she looked closer at the host of angels.

Their halos were crumpled tin foil 

their wings made of thunder clouds.

She stopped moving in her bed 

and pointed her finger back at them.

“Leave.  Hell already has enough people.  

I  am not going today.”

On the tenth day, my friend told me this story

and, with a quirky smile that lit up her wan face

and spoke to the sense of humor 

she had had all of her life,
added  that she guessed
her final flight had been delayed

                                  ***